Home Automation Disaster Management System via SMS and GSM

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Home Automation Disaster Management System via SMS and GSM Nadia Shaheen, Aihab Khan, Malik Sikander Hayat Khiyal and Qaiser Javed Abstract— The paper presents working of disaster management system and realizes the monitoring of home security systems such as fire, gas leakage, smoke, electric short circuit.The system is implemented connecting Global system for mobile communication (GSM) modem with personal computer (PC) through serial cable via Attention (AT) commands set. The proposed system is intended to measure or sense the threshold value of different parameters like pressure or temperature level and sends it to preconfigured cell number via GSM modem. The main purpose of the paper is to design a cost effective, cheap and secure system which sends an alert Short Message Service (SMS) when the value of pressure or temperature level exceeds the limit. Most commonly used tools such as cellular phones and wireless GSM modem have become very effective techniques and can be opted more efficiently for controlling the above mentioned situations remotely independent of geographical locations. The main focus is to send SMS to preconfigured cell number and triggering an alarm whenever an alarming situation is occurred. The user can in turn respond to the event by sending command to overcome the situation. It is concluded that the proposed technique results in safer syatem and it strengthens the security concerns of home by proposing a cost effective solution.

Index Terms— Disasters control via SMS, SMS based Disaster control, Disasters management, Global system for mobile communication (GSM), Short Message Service (SMS) via GSM

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1 INTRODUCTION

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N present century efforts are being practiced for developing an intelligent home control system in order to fulfill the security related requirements[1]. With the development of information technology the requirements for automated security system and the interests among the individuals in order to operate their home appliances and controlling the alarming situations through cellular phones has increased. Many systems were implemented using telephone lines for home automation control and controlling home appliances [2]. The requirement for an efficient and cost effective system to cater the disasterous situations and in order to fulfill the security concerns of home owners when the user is away from home, there was a strong need to develop a cost effective and reliable system to satisfy the security related needs of occupants. In order to solve this problem most recently techniques have been followed by proposing different solutions such as internet and wireless communications [3,4] but still there are certain shortcomings and limitations such as use of web, costly, less reliable and less secure systems. With the advancement of technology and increased demand for smart homes the requirements for automated systems

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have increased [5]. The system is designed to overcome all the weaknesses and limitations by presenting an efficient, cost effective and secure system in order to facilitate the home owners for their safety and convenience. This paper focuses attention on remote control aspects by proposing efficient and cost effective structures. The system is implemented by using wireless GSM technology for controlling the disasterous situations such as gas leakage, fire, smoke etc. remotely. The GSM modem is connected with personal computer (PC) through serial data cable via RS232 port and is used to send an alert SMS to preconfigured cell number via AT command set whenever any alarming situation is occurred. Some examples of AT commands are: "AT+CMGR" to read message "AT+CMGS" to send message "AT+CMGD" to delete message The system periodically checks the values of different parameters such as temperature level, pressure level and Lower Explosive limit etc. As soon as the value of such parameters exceeds threshold value the system triggers an alarm and sends text message to preconfigured cell ———————————————— number reporting an accidental situation. The system has Nadia Shaheen is with the Fatima Jinnah Women University, the Mall the ability to disable/enable the certain features of home Road Rawalpindi. Malik Sikander Hiyat Khiyal is with the Department of Software Engineer- as well. The system provides the remote controlling at ing, Fatima Jinnah Women University, the Mall Road, Rawalpindi. higher level by providing ease to users as they are proAihab Khan is with the Software Engineering Department, University of vided with flexible and user friendly system that overFatimah Jinnah, the Mall, Rawalpindi. Qaiser Javed is with department of Computer Science, International Islamic comes the problems of home owners faced by them in University, Islamabad daily routine. The system has advantage of controlling the disasterous situations remotely through cellular phones and pro-

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poses a cost effective solution. As GSM technology is used to send SMS to give alerts to the users independent of geographical boundaries. Users will not have to worry regarding the safety of their homes. As if there would be any alarming situation system would generate the alerts by generating the message to the specified cell number. It also provides the user to automatically generate instructions by the use of AT commands to perform a particular task such as switching on/ off gas etc. The system is practical for all types of homes, cost-effective and it provides full security to its users and home owners by reducing their problems faced by them in daily life. But the main limitation of the system is that it can only work in the presence of GSM service. In the absence of GSM service it would not work. The Section 2 describes the related work. Section 3 presents the framework overview of the proposed system. Section 4 describes the technique and Section 5 is composed of experimental results. The paper is concluded in section 6.

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appliance control system then it will do the operation according to the commands received by SMS. Secondly if there is any intrusion that is detected then alarming message is sent to the user that is used to transfer the data from sender to receiver and thus specified action is taken against certain action.

3

Framework Overview

Disasters Fire Smoke Gas leakage ElectricShort Circuit

Parameters Exceeded Carbon Mono-oxide ^ presence of Smoke ^ rise in Air Temperature Presence of Smoke Increased % of Lower Explosive limit ^ presence of Humidity Increased Voltage level ^ increased amount of Current

               Fig. 1: Effect of different parameters on disasters 

2

Review Stage

Zarka et.al [6] proposed a system to measure the temperature and sends it to subscribed cell number if the user wishes to know it. The main purpose of the project was to develop cost effective system to control the temperature remotely anywhere at any time especially in region where it is difficult to access. The system is implemented by using J2ME technology and AT commands by supporting PDU mode of SMS. It consists of GSM terminal that is used for SMS and Nokia 32 where messages are stored having sim card. System is composed of temperature sensor. Client side has graphical user interface which involves checking temperature, registering users and help menu. The server side application acts according to the SMS sent by the user by parsing the SMS and adds its information in database then to react up to the information in the SMS. Balasubramanian et.al [7] presents the remote control of home appliances, intrusion detection and generating alerts on fire detection remotely. The system is based on SMS technology for sending SMS in order to control the appliances and emergency situations remotely. Whenever any alarming situation is occurred SMS is sent which is also converted into email and sent to PC which ultimately causes alarm to be triggered or sound in cell phone if it is received by cell phone. An 8085 based microprocessor system is extended to light and heat sensors through interrupt interface. Fire detection is also by done by telephone dialing instead of SMS and email. An efficient and cost effective system is proposed by presenting the control schemes of telephonic network, cellular phones and email based control system. Khiyal et.al [8] proposed the SMS based home appliance control system that sends and receives SMS from cellular phones through GSM network by means of AT commands and .Net framework. The objective of the project is to develop a cost-effective application that allows user to detect intrusion and remotely control home appliances using a cell phone. If SMS is received by home

The effect of different parameters on disaster occurrence is shown in figure: 1.The system periodically checks the threshold value of these different parameters and if the value exceedes the certain predetermined limit it will trigger an alarm by sending SMS to preconfigured cell number warning the user about alarming situation. For example according to parameters defined in the table the system will detect fire in the house if following conditions are true: Amount of carbon monoxide exceedes the limit, there is smoke in the surrounding environment and Temperature of air has increased. If any one of these parameters is false the system will not trigger alarm. It works accordingly in the same way for other conditions too.

             Fig. 2: Proposed Model for Disaster Management System 

Figure: 2 show the working of proposed model that communicates with remote mobile through GSM network via USB port. The system continuously keeps on checking the values of different sensors and processes it the PC. If any alarming situation occurs the sytem will send SMS to user’s cell no via GSM netwwork by opening the port for

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communication with remote mobile. The user will in turn send the SMS confirming the delivery of the message and controlling the situation.

4 Technique The algorithm of figure: 2 presented in Section 3 is given below:

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against the input. Test cases conducted for the proposed software are given below. Test Case1: Title: Run hardware test System: Disaster Management System Input: Set the Port number, Baud rate, Data Bits etc. Tests: The system checks the port number and gives OK response showing hardware is properly connected. Result: Test Succeeded.

Run GSM Hardware Test If Success Return True, Else if failed Return False, If true Open the Port1 Else if false Throw Exception If (Port1.Isopen ()) Loop: Checking the values of Sensors: If value exceeds Threshold Send alert SMS to preconfigured user by generating Alarm If Status is Message received Check the authorized user If true Perform the Action Else if false Ignore Command

Test Case2: Title: Run hardware support test System: Disaster Management System Input: Input a number of Attention commands for checking hardware support Tests: The System returns OK showing commands are supported by hardware. Result: Test Succeeded. Test Case3: Title: Security check for Gas leakage in house System: Disaster Management System Input: The system randomly and repeatedly sets the values Lower Explosive Limit and humidity. Tests: The System generates alarm and sends SMS to preconfigured cell number if both parameters exceed threshold value. Result: Test Succeeded. Test Case4: Title: Security check for Electric Short Circuit in house System: Disaster Management System Input: The system randomly and repeatedly sets the value of Voltage level and amount of Current in ohms. Tests: The System will generate alarm and will send SMS to preconfigured cell number if Voltage level and amount of current exceed threshold value. Result: Test Succeeded.

Return true End

Figure: 2. Algorithm for proposed Disaster Management System

5 Experimental Results 5.1 Test Cases: Test cases are conducted by giving set of instructions to the system and the output is verified

Test Case5: Title: Security check for Fire in house System: Disaster Management System Input: The system randomly and repeatedly sets the value of Carbon Mono-oxide, Temperature level and status of Smoke presence. Tests: The System generates alarm and sends SMS to preconfigured cell number if the value of parameters defined in input exceeds threshold value and Smoke is present in surrounding environment. Result: Test Succeeded.

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Test Case5: Title: Security check for Smoke in house System: Disaster Management System Input: The system randomly and repeatedly sets the status of Smoke presence. Tests: The System generates alarm and sends SMS to preconfigured cell number if Smoke is present in surrounding environment. Result: Test Succeeded. Test Case6: Title: Security check for Authorized user System: Disaster Management System Input: The user sends message to system to simulate any action. Tests: The System checks the authorized user by checking user's cell number. If there is authorized user perform the action otherwise discard the command. Result: Test Succeeded. 5.2 Test Case Response Graphs: The relation between disasters and average time period in seconds required to report about each disaster is shown in following figure:  

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                       Fig. 4: Relation between Disasters and Message Success Rate 

The results presented in figure: 4 show the message success rate reporting about disaster when any alarming situation is occurred. The experiments were conducted by sending SMS 100 times and average success rate of reporting each disaster is calculated.

6 Conclusion and future work Disaster Management System is implemented to facilitate the home owners by providing them safety and security. One of the major aspects of the system is sending an alert SMS to the preconfigured cell number whenever value of temperature or pressure level exceeds the predefined threshold value. The system is implemented by using cost effective technology by providing an efficient and cost effective solution to the users controlling the system remotely independent of geographical locations. For future developments its possible to develop a system can be further developed by using some advanced technology like SMS Gateways enhancing more security and reliability.

References [1].  Renato  Nunes,  “Demobus‐A  New  Approach  to  Home  Automation”,  Proceedings  of  8th  International  Congress  on  Electrical Engineering, Portugal, July2003.    [2]. E.M.C, Wong , ”Phone‐based remote controller for home  and  office  automation”,  IEEE  Transactions  on  Consumer  Electronics, Volume 40 , pages 28 ‐34 , Issue 1, Feb 1994.                         Fig. 3: Relation between Disasters and average Time period   

The results presented in the figure: 3 show the average amount of time period taken by the system to report about particular disaster by conducting experiments. For example the average amount of time period for fire detection is maximum showing it will take more time to inform the user if there is fire in the house as compared to other disasters. The relation between disasters and average percentage of successful message sent to the user reporting about the disasters is shown in following figure:

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